Outsourcing to Africa: A Relative Ranking 15 Country Readiness

This is a Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) study of 15 countries resulting in a ranking of their relative readiness. Criteria used include infrastructure, people/skills and business environment.

Below is an extract from the report from the report’s overview:

“Egypt turns out as the most attractive location in Africa. Egypt will have strong competition from all the others in the infrastructure ready band as all are working hard to improve. Egypt has an edge because ICT is supported and believed in by the leadership and all actions are coordinated. Further with the close coordination between different departments, especially the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) and the General Authority for Investment and Free zones (GAFI), makes a real single window service for any industry coming in to Egypt. An additional strength is the serious and coordinated efforts that the government and other stakeholders are making to maintain a steady supply of trained human resources on a continuing basis. Egypt is fi rst in the people and skills score in this study. Egypt will however have to look at cyber laws, tax rates, and general living conditions and infrastructure to maintain this position. Again, in January 2009, Egypt has done very well according to a study completed by Gartner. The biggest challenge that Egypt will face is strong competition from South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, and Mauritius. South Africa will soon overtake all others in banking, finance, and sensitive operations that need a strong security base. Also South Africa will forge closer ties with the United Kingdom and United States of America than any other in the region.

“In the next band Botswana is topping and may jump soon if the promises made in various policies and programmes are kept. The Botswana Innovation Hub and how it actually works and keeps up the announced promises will pave the future as far as Botswana’s position is concerned. If Botswana does jump to the ‘Ready’ band it may well overtake some of the current leaders.

“In the Yet to be ready band Nigeria falls just short of the required infrastructure score. If Nigeria improves to enter the infrastructure upcoming band it will be within the top three in that band; thus there is potential to be taken advantage of here. Nigeria currently is the best out of the fi fteen in export of ICT services.”